


guide you home

by seventhswan



Category: Free!
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Mostly Gen, Multi, during Rin's rageball period, set before season one episode twelve, the adventures of the Save Our Rin-chan Committee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1936929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the past few days Makoto has been alternately convinced that Rin’s behaviour can be explained by PTSD, a brain tumor, and adolescent bedwetting.</p><p>Or: the rehabilitation of Rin begins with kitten therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	guide you home

**Author's Note:**

> Because near the end of the first season my friend and I couldn’t stop clutching our faces and screaming into the abyss WHY RIN, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS, _THEY JUST WANT TO LOVE YOU_. 
> 
> Title from Mariah Carey's _Anytime You Need a Friend_. Set before season one episode twelve, and takes no account of anything that has happened in season two.

Rei’s life is starting to follow a very bizarre, very tiring pattern where he is cold, and wet, and suddenly feeling very, very naked, and being yelled at by a virtual stranger.

“Well,” Makoto says, when they’re all lying in the (okay, metaphorical) rubble of Rin’s latest explosion, blinking dazedly at each other, “that was… It was less… bad… than last time?”

“It was – it was less bad,” Rei agrees as best he can. Even though it was actually pretty bad, and he’s sort of getting tired of Rin lurking around endlessly and then dramatically looming out of nowhere like, like that old grade school story about Bloody Mary. Except possibly more vengeful.

Anyway, they need to support their captain. He reaches out a hand to rub Makoto’s naked wet shoulder – comfortingly! To provide comfort! For his _senpai!_ \- and then thinks better of it when Nagisa’s eyes get that warning slit to them. His hand hovers uselessly in mid air. 

“He’s a lunatic,” Haru says flatly. He’s kicking along on his back in the water like a satisfied frog, and he says it in the exact same tone he says… well, everything, actually. Like it’s just the latest dull thing in a pile of dull, non-water-or-Makoto-related things.

“Haru,” Makoto begins, a tiny bit chidingly. Then, to Rei’s horror, he suddenly looks misty. The left corner of his mouth tilts dangerously and he sniffs a little. Rei immediately averts his eyes, because it’s not right to see your captain like that.

“Don’t be sad, Mako-chan!” Nagisa chirps, bouncing over to Makoto and snuggling up under his chin. There are a lot of things Rei could point out right now about Nagisa’s blatant hypocrisy regarding physical affection, not least the fact that he has _no actual right_ to get snippy about Rei as they’re _not dating, not even a little bit, not ever_ , but he swallows them, because other things are more important. Like the fact that Rin may be a maniac, but Rei’s team loves him, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they have to do something.

“We used to be so happy, though,” Makoto sighs, hugging Nagisa back loosely. His huge green eyes look imploringly at Rei, like Makoto is a stray in one of those awful shelter ads on TV. “So happy, Rei.”

And, well, that tears it.

“I think the time may well have come,” Rei says tentatively, pushing his glasses up his nose, “to do something about Rin-san.”

Nagisa cheers.

|

Nagisa calls the Inaugural What To Do About Rin-chan Meeting to order at his house the following night. He’s inexplicably wearing a pair of glasses he obviously stole from somewhere, and clearing his throat a lot. Mrs Hazuki keeps bustling in and out with drinks and snacks. She’s weirdly normal, apart from squeezing Rei’s cheek – just once – and sharing a lot of strangely conspirational looks with her son.

“Dearly beloved,” Nagisa begins, once he’s banged his open hand on the kotatsu surface several times to get their attention, “we, the Save Our Rin-chan Committee, are gathered here today –“

“What’s with the glasses?” Kou interrupts. Nagisa harrumphs, and gives her a withering look over the tops of his frames. It’s actually really unsettling. Rei feels a shudder coming on.

“I believe it is the proper protocol to _raise your hand_ when addressing your chairman,” Nagisa says.

“I don’t think _any of this_ is in any protocol _anywhere_ ,” Rei points out, maybe a little hysterically, because he increasingly feels his life spiralling out of control.

Nagisa glares at him. Kou whistles low, under her breath.

“I had some ideas,” Makoto interjects quickly, because he’s a saint. He gets up with an earnestly written list in his hand, which he unfolds and starts to read from.

“Ah, I was thinking, we could take him somewhere nice? Maybe the beach, like we used to… Or we could throw him a party! At his dorm! I could bake a cake!”

“Makoto bakes good cakes,” Haru says unexpectedly. Makoto beams like the sun, a pleased flush suffusing his entire face.

“That’s – er –“ Kou says, shooting Rei a glance that states plainly what they both know, namely that a surprise party sprung on Rin in his personal space is likely to end only one way, and not particularly prettily. Party hats are _pointy_. “That’s – those are really good suggestions, Makoto-senpai!”

“Do you really think Rin-chan would come to the beach with us?” Nagisa asks. He suddenly sounds very young, and very vulnerable, and very hopeful, all the clowning dropped. His eyes on Rei are like saucers, they put Makoto’s to shame.

Rei swallows. Maybe if they kidnapped him? It’s a mark of how this ridiculous team – and, okay, Nagisa in particular – has got under his skin that he’s seriously considering it.

“Ah – who… Who wouldn’t want to go to the beach with you guys?” Kou says, smiling, and Nagisa beams. 

On their way out of the Hazuki house a couple hours later, Kou grips Rei’s wrist in her hand and mutters in his ear _we need reinforcements_. It’s an understatement.

|

While Kou and Rei work on reinforcements – Kou’s first assignment being to get to Rin’s roommate through Samezuka’s captain - Makoto starts reading a lot of educational health pamphlets. Nobody has any idea where he’s getting them from, though the smart money’s on Ama-chan-sensei. Partly because she’s been gunning for the raise that would come from taking on the vacant post of school guidance counsellor, and partly because she secretly really enjoys messing with people - and with Makoto that really is knocking down low-hanging fruit. He’s taken to carrying them around like talismans, the way he insisted on having garlic in his pockets every day the year that their class was in charge of the haunted house for the school festival ( _that was a dark period_ , Nagisa mutters). 

Nagisa also voices – loudly and frequently – his opinion that Makoto is sleeping with the pamphlets in his bed, and possibly working up to performing some sort of white magic ritual with them. The other day he came to school with his shoes on the wrong feet, and forgot to feed the class rabbit. It’s a whole new dark period for Makoto.

The upshot of it is that over the past few days he’s been alternately convinced that Rin is suffering from PTSD, a brain tumor, and adolescent bedwetting.

“Positive touch!” he blurts out during the second What To Do About Rin-chan Meeting, which so far has seen little progress, and seems mostly to have been called by Nagisa as an excuse to see how close he can actually get to baldly sitting in Rei’s lap before he’s physically – but politely - removed. Everyone blinks, save Haru, as Makoto had been so busy reading they’d honestly forgotten he was even there. Kou even looks up from painting her toenails.

“It says in here, positive touch,” he repeats, a little more quietly, color high on his cheekbones. He’s waving possibly the most lurid pamphlet yet. Once he realises he’s got everyone’s attention, he flips it open and starts reading.

“Positive touch, and a happy tone of voice, and lots of rewards –“ he begins to narrate. Rei squints suspiciously at the pamphlet. There’s a photograph of a boy playing with a golden retriever on the front. And Makoto _really_ isn’t getting much sleep these days.

“Um,” Kou offers, coughing delicately. She exchanges an agonized look with Rei. He loses.

“Makoto-senpai,” he says, sighing, because there’s no delicate way to put this, “I think that pamphlet is about how to housebreak puppies.”

He mimes refolding the pamphlet so the front is visible, and Makoto does, and well. He blinks, and then colors ferociously.

Nagisa rolls around on the floor for a good _fifteen minutes_.

“It was a very good try, Makoto-senpai,” Kou offers generously, patting him once on the arm. Makoto looks _embarrassed_ , and hurt, which is just the worst. Makoto should never, ever look like that. Rei might dislike Rin a little bit. Never _hate_ , because there isn’t a more ugly emotion, but certainly dislike.

“The basic idea might be the same,” Haru offers, voice flat as usual. Nobody’s quite sure if he’s trying to make a joke, but at least it makes Makoto smile.

Just then, Kou’s phone rings, and she dives on it fast enough to smudge her polish. She speaks into it incredibly quickly, actually legitimately uses the phrase _oh you!_ , giggles a lot, then hangs up. Rei hasn’t considered this possibility before, but Kou may actually be a criminal mastermind. She looks around at the boys, giddy, and wiggles the phone in one hand.

“That was _reinforcements_ ,” she grins.

|

“Reinforcements” turns out to be Mikoshiba and Rin’s roommate, Nitori, who turn up at Nagisa's door with a box of chocolates and a melon, as if they’ve been invited to a pleasant social occasion as opposed to… whatever this actually is. Mrs Hazuki provides more drinks and slices the melon. Both boys are effusively polite.

“I think your beach idea is actually really good, Tachibana-senpai!” Nitori chirps, as soon as they’re properly seated around Mission Control, which is what Nagisa is calling the Hazuki kotatsu.

“I’ve been quite worried about Rin-senpai! He never seems to want to do anything fun, he spends all his time…” Nitori trails off uncertainly.

“Brooding?” Mikoshiba offers with a frown.

Kou nods, and for the first time in this whole farce, there’s a real crease of sadness and worry in her face. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Rin’s her brother, and as glib and funny as Kou is, Rin’s distance must really be hurting her. The mood’s suddenly very, very heavy. Makoto leans his head morosely on Haru’s shoulder. 

“I think we can work up to the beach idea,” Mikoshiba says sensibly, into the silence. Rei is suddenly very glad he's here. “I can get Matsuoka-kun there somehow by making up a fake training exercise. But before that, there might be some smaller steps we can take?”

Kou nods, brightening a little. Makoto shoots Mikoshiba a grateful smile over the top of her head. In the hierarchy of people who should never be upset, Kou ranks behind only Makoto, so Rei's hideously grateful too.

They start talking, Nagisa whips out one of those freestanding office flipcharts from somewhere, and they don’t leave the Hazuki house until well into the night.

|

Rei’s first assignment on the reinforcements front is Ama-chan-sensei, but it turns out he doesn’t have much work to do. She catches up to him in the hallway on his way to English – well, more accurately, she fades into sight from around a dark corner. It’s all he can do not to have a heart attack.

“Ryuugazaki-kun~!” she chirps, sunlight itself. Rei gasps for breath. A little frown creases her forehead.

“Ahh, sorry, did I scare you?” she asks, still smiling. “I just wanted to let you know, about Matsuoka-kun – I really don’t think it’s appropriate for me to get involved.”

Rin’s heart sinks. He’d really been hoping his mission would be as wildly successful as Kou’s.

“Oh – I understand, sensei,” he says, already mentally crossing her off his list. She has a point, after all, even though it's a crying shame as she and Kou are a frankly terrifying team.

Ama-chan-sensei coughs a little, delicately.

“I _said_ , Ryuugazaki-kun, that it just wouldn’t be appropriate for a faculty member to be involved that way,” she says. There’s a little tic jumping near her eyebrow.

“I see,” Rei says, a little slowly. He’s maybe slightly confused. “Understood, sensei. My apologies if anyone on the team bothered you about this.”

The tic’s getting more pronounced.

“You _see_ , Ryuugazaki-kun,” she says, speaking very slowly and deliberately, “even if a faculty member was _very fond_ of _certain students_ , she certainly couldn’t _help them_ with a personal matter outside of school. At all. Even if she thinks it is a very _worthwhile_ matter and she thinks she could be _most useful_.”

She then gives Rei the most labored, most obvious wink he’s ever witnessed. Oh.

“Of _course not_ , sensei,” Rei says loudly, as if there are several invisible people listening in. “I would never ask you to do such a thing! Forgive my impertinence!”

Ama-chan-sensei grins, nods once, and floats away as she usually does, as though she’s walking on a cloud of serene air. Once Rei’s seated safely in English, he sends Kou a text that says simply _mission successful_ , and gets a string of emojis in response.

It’s only when he’s being told to open his textbook at page seventy that he thinks to wonder how Ama-chan-sensei _already knew_ about The Rin Problem, and gets such a perturbed look on his face that Nagisa leans over, concerned, and mutters that _you look like you’ve seen a ghost, Rei-chan~~!_

|

“Cats,” Haru says at Nagisa’s that night.

“Cats,” Ama-chan-sensei repeats, somewhat doubtfully.

“Cats,” Haru repeats, in the exact same tone. “We kidnap Rin and shut him in a room with all the neighborhood cats.”

“Are we even there in this plan?” Nagisa asks dryly. Rei elbows him. Nagisa makes a little mou of displeasure and spreads himself further over Rei’s lap. Rei tells himself he’s merely putting up with this treatment.

Haru blinks.

“Of course we’re there,” he says. “Us. And the cats. And Rin.”

“Well, at least someone finally addressed the K-word that was the bright pink elephant in the room,” Nagisa’s eldest sister says. She has badly-dyed blue hair, chews a lot of gum, and keeps making eyes at Ama-chan-sensei, who hasn’t noticed. Nobody’s quite sure why she’s now part of the committee.

Actually, the Hazuki front room is becomingly increasingly crowded. Gorou heard a valid excuse to be in a room with Ama-chan-sensei on a regular basis and took it – despite the fact his only contribution to the meetings is to say repeatedly that Rin will come around in his own time – so now they number ten. And they’re _still_ getting nowhere. And everyone keeps – like right now – talking at once.

It still warms Rei’s heart, though, to see all these people in a room to help Rin, to help the Iwatobi swim team. It’s truly – beautiful.

“What are you thinking about, Rei-chan?” Nagisa whispers. His breath tickles Rei’s ear, and he shudders.

“Nothing,” Rei lies. “I’m not – I’m not thinking about anything at all.”

“You have that look on your face,” Nagisa sing-songs, under his breath. He’s wriggling against Rei’s side like a pleased bunny rabbit.

“What look?” Rei asks. Nagisa’s sister – whose name Rei really needs to remember, it’s terribly rude of him – is shifting by degrees, ever so slightly, towards Ama-chan-sensei’s side. Haru and Makoto are earnestly discussing the neighborhood cats, heads together. Gorou, Mikoshiba and Nitori are laughing about something. Rei wishes he had a camera. He wishes he could show Rin this – all these people who love him, who care about him, who want him to be okay.

Nagisa reaches up and puts a fingertip between Rei’s eyebrows.

“Right here~,” he says, grinning. “Rei-chan gets a little look, right there. You’re thinking about something beautiful.”

Rei can’t help it, he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Second and concluding part to come proooobably next week.


End file.
